This invention relates to an automatic performance device used in an electronic musical instrument or the like and more particularly, to an automatic performance device for automatically performing prestored plural music pieces successively and which is capable of stopping, when desired, performance of a certain music piece which is being played at a suitable position and shifting to performance of a next music piece.
In conventional automatic performance device, performance data of plural music pieces are stored in a memory in advance and a desired one of the music pieces is selectively designated to provide an automatic performance thereof. When a user wishes to change a music piece to be played, he must make a selection operation for designating a new desired music piece and this involves a troublesome operation.
It has therefore been proposed to preset an order of automatically performing plural music pieces successively and make automatic performance of the plural music pieces successively in accordance with this preset order of performance. There is an automatic performance device of this type in which the order of performance of the plural music pieces can be determined as desired on the basis of, for example, operation by the user.
In this type of prior art device, however, shifting to performance of a next music piece can be made only at a time point at which performance of one music piece has been completed and it is not possible to stop performance of a music piece which is being played midway to shift to performance of a next music piece. Hence, it is not possible in this type of device to promptly recognize the actually set order of performance by, for example, listening to only the beginning portions of individual music pieces to make a quick shift from a music piece to a next one. It is also not possible in this type of device to perform a certain music piece repeatedly and then stop performance of the music piece midway to shift to a next music piece. Thus, in this type of prior art automatic performance device, the degree of freedom or flexibility in the automatic performance is extremely restricted.